Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters by Jonathan Nossiter, Tina Kover (Translator)

From the Publisher

Jonathan Nossiter, acclaimed filmmaker and former sommelier, had his first taste of wine at the age of three in Paris, from his father’s fingertip. For him, wine is “memory in its most liquid and dynamic form,” as essential an expression of culture as cinema, books, baseball, painting, even sex. With great wit and passion, he celebrates wine and its enthusiasts—and defends both from those who tell us what to drink and how to think about it.

In Liquid Memory, the American expatriate investigates the infinite mysteries of terroir, the historical sense of place that makes wine a living, thrilling expression of cultural identity that can stretch back centuries. The book is a deliriously joyful master class in locating the soul of a wine, and in learning to trust your own palate and desires. Nossiter, who has already created an uproar in the world of wine with his film Mondovino, arms us against the tyranny of snobs, critics, and charlatans who would prevent us from taking part in what should be a gloriously democratic bacchanalia.

From the sacred wine shops and three-star restaurants of Paris to the biodynamic vineyards of Burgundy, from the hipster bistros of New York to film locations in Rio de Janeiro and Athens, this singular journey invites us to consider how power, misused, can sometimes mask an absence of taste—and how our own personal taste can combat power in any sphere. A controversial bestseller in Europe, Liquid Memory is sure to rile the establishment, enlighten the thirsty, and reveal the inner life of the world’s most mysterious, contradictory, and jubilatory drink.

The New York Times - Eric Asimov

Jonathan Nossiter is the wine world's own special irritant. In manner and style, his new book, Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters, like his 2004 movie "Mondovino," is annoying, polarizing and provocative. It raises questions that deserve to be considered, yet his technique and style may turn off potential converts.

Publishers Weekly

Nossiter made the wine world documentary Mondovino, and his first impassioned, personal book is a discursion into the slippery relationships between wine, taste, power and memory. The author is particularly eager to take on the vinicultural powers that be. Drawing on lifelong personal and professional experience with these ideas, the author travels to Paris and Burgundy, from small wine shops to a multinational, franchised wine emporium, through restaurants of varying reputation and public regard, and finally onto a tour of Burgundian vignerons. The entire time, Nossiter debates constantly with various professionals about such matters as consumption-driven culture, contemporary wine criticism and the importance of place—also known as terroir—not just in wine but in culture generally. There are amusing scenes with such notables as Michelin-starred chef Alain Senderens and deft comparisons, such as the equation of a critic like Robert Parker to another “decider,” Dubya himself. The quixotic approach, with such frequent tactics as film comparisons, meets with mixed success, at regular risk of losing the reader. It's a book equally intriguing and irritating, and one feels that the author wants it that way. (Oct.)

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